Diary of an Arcade Employee

Ghostbusters II Trading Cards

If you are out there pounding the pavement and hunting for retro toys and collectibles like I am, Antique Malls can be hit or miss destinations. For every booth containing the types of things I am looking for (70s and 80s collectibles) I typically pass anywhere from 10 to 20 booths full of antique furniture, paintings, clothes, Coca-Cola collectibles, books, magazines, glassware, lamps, and all sorts of random knick-knacks. In any given Antique Mall it’s not unusual for me to find only one or two booths with “my kind of stuff.” And, often times that “stuff” is marked at “antique/collectible” prices. Occasionally though, I’ll find a little stash of cool things priced at next to nothing, like a brand new, unopened case of Ghostbusters II trading cards for ten bucks. While they are sometimes few and far between, those are the kinds of finds that keep me coming back.

Trivia fact: a case of Ghostbusters II Trading Cards contains 36 packs of cards. Now you know something most people don’t know. If you ever win Jeopardy with that little nugget of information, you owe me half your winnings.

I currently own lots and lots of things that are still in the box. Some of them, like Star Wars toys, I enjoy leaving in the box — but leaving trading cards inside a wrapper inside a box doesn’t make much sense to me. Using the same trading card sheets I used for my Star Wars Trading Cards, I decided to open the packages.

Each pack came with a 8 cards, 1 sticker card, and 1 stick of gum.

Those of you that read my Star Wars Trading Card article know that I tricked my son Mason into eating the gum. I tried to, once again, get him to eat the gum from these cards. “No way,” he said. Then I promised him that this gum was fresh and wouldn’t be disgusting. My son, who has no idea what year Ghostbusters II was released, took the bait.

HA HA! Is it wrong that I have an entire folder on my computer called “Mason Eating Stale Gum” now?

I decided to open half the packs (18) and sort the cards numerically. I was curious to see how many packs one would need to open to get an entire set of all 88 cards. Surprisingly, I got an entire set with around 12 or 13 packs. Not only did that include all 88 cards, but also all 11 stickers which, when flipped over, can be arranged to form the following:

Like most other movie-related trading cards, these cards contain little factoids about the movie — mostly about the characters or particular scenes with a couple of “behind the scenes” facts thrown in as well. One thing these cards reminded me of is that my eyesight is not what it once was. Either small print is getting more blurry, or the Flackster needs some reading glasses.

All in all, I had a good time opening, sorting, and inserting the cards into the display sleeves. Now that I have both my Star Wars cards and Ghostbusters II cards in a book, I’ll be on the lookout for more retro trading cards to collect! After opening these I would like to reiterate that I ain’t afraid of no ghost … but I’m still afraid of 20+ year old ghost gum.

Flack — I just can’t get up the enthusiasm for the hobby since so many of the images are available online in high-res (front and back). I guess holding them never meant as much to me when I collected them as finding out what each one looked like.

Still, it might be worth tracking some old packs down just to give some of the gum to each of my kids.

I think the fun (at least from a kid’s perspective back in the day) was buying a pack at a time and hoping to eventually collect them all. It was also cool as a kid to get a card with a little bit of trivia information that you could lay down on your friends. (“See those floating library books? They did that with string, yo!”) Nowadays the trivia facts can be viewed in one big plop from IMDB or Wikipedia, and of course buying a case of cards at a time slightly defeats the fun of making multiple purchases in hopes of getting them all.

Like anything else, it’s fun if the nostalgia factor’s there. I enjoy seeing the Star Wars cards again because I had a few as a kid. As for the GB2 cards, to be honest, I opened them a couple of weeks ago and I’m not 100% sure where the sheets are at the moment. Something fun to do once and then move on to the next adventure. :)

Nice find. I would not have turned them down at that price either. And i also open any unopened packs of vintage trading cards. That’s part of the fun. There’s one booth at a flea market near me that almost always has some new 80 s treasure each time i visit.